Needless to say, Sears took fast action to improve its call center (as well as its entire customer service organization). Today, it ranks amongst the best. But this story begs the question, “How well would your call center perform on national radio?” There are several things you can do to avoid call center hell (and the wrath of a radio broadcaster looking for a good story at your expense):

• Get help with IVR design (Interactive Voice Response). IT staffers typically aren’t trained to design interactive dialogue for customer service applications. Get help from professionals that have experience developing interactive voice response solutions that are useful, usable and engaging.
  
  
• Evaluate solutions wisely. Coming from a vendor, this next point may sound self-serving, but it’s good advice: get collective internal agreement on your needs from the business, the telecommunications manager, customer service managers and agents before you go to any vendors. If you don’t, solution providers will inevitably use the situation to mold your needs to their products. Develop a scorecard that will objectively (and comprehensively) measure the vendor’s ability to deliver on your customer service initiative.
  
  
• Adopt an Outside-In Approach. Most organizations present themselves to the public through their own eyes (commonly known as “Inside-Out”), which doesn’t always match the needs of the customer. Present menu options that match the reasons customers call.
  
  Many people use the “grandmother test” to validate their thinking. For example, telling callers to “Press 1 for Accounts Payable, 2 for Accounts Receivable, or 3 for Shipping” is not grandmother friendly. Another example; customers perplexed over unauthorized charges may not consider their issue a billing problem, rather an issue related to fraud. Think these scenarios through.
  
  
• Present Options. Customers like to feel they are in control of their relationship with you. If your call center puts callers in queues with long wait times (more than 2 minutes) give them an option to leave a voicemail with a preferred callback time. Or, let them know where to find you on the web or where to send you email.
  
  
• Last but not least, link customer service investments to business performance. Gartner’s 2002 survey of customer contact centers clearly shows: leading companies expect investments in customer service to fuel improvements in business performance. These same leaders score highest in customer satisfaction. The “laggards” focus on cost (not quality) and consistently deliver poor customer satisfaction scores. Not surprisingly, the laggards are also spending more money per call (Reference, “CRM in the Contact Center: Prioritizing Investments” Gartner Measurement, October 2002).